The story of the Florida Bar.

• Author: Blankenship, Gary

Fifty years.

On April 28, 1950, the Florida State Bar Association held its last meeting at the Bar's annual convention in Daytona Beach. That same day, The Florida Bar held its first as the official arm of the Florida Supreme Court for regulating the legal profession.

In 1977, writing about the Bar's early, formative years, Kenneth Sherouse, Jr., who became its first executive director in 1954, said of its founders and early leaders: "It is important, if truth be told, to recall that these were men of high purpose and rectitude, debating the shape and substance of the jurisdiction of an official, integrated Bar to act, firmly intending to use the powers they were defining."

He went on: "I should further reveal that these men who paid for the Bar from their own pockets and created such extraordinary time from their own finite allotment of life, did so in very large part because of the great respect and affection they had for each other."

Those themes of devotion to the Bar, the legal profession, and fellow lawyers echo through reminisces and interviews with the lawyers who made the Bar what it is for its first 50 years.

According to Marshall Cassedy, the Bar's executive director from 1961 to 1980, "From the very beginning, The Florida Bar has had a genuine spirit of unselfishness among the rank and file lawyers of the Bar and within the leadership of the Bar.

"By this I mean that lawyers since the beginning have gratuitously given of their time on grievance committees, serving as referees, serving on all kinds of committees and particularly the lawyers who have served on the Board of Governors of The Florida Bar have given immensely of themselves timewise and financially without complaint....

"This has been the driving force and the glue that has held us together."

John DeVault, 1995-96 Bar president, put it this way: "The satisfying thing about Bar activities and Bar work is the quality of the people that you become acquainted with and maintain friendships with. What you get out of it are friendships with people who are of such high quality it enriches your life. It makes all the time that's spent really worthwhile.

"They deal with important issues and they deal with them in a way that generally the results that come out of them are right."

Current Bar President Edith Osman said the Bar's 50th anniversary is a chance for lawyers to think about their rich history in this state and a chance to protect that history.

"When I was elected and was told we were going to have the 50th anniversary in my presidential year, I thought we'd have something to celebrate. I really didn't think through the relevance," she said. "I realized there is so much rich history and it hasn't been documented. The people who know it are getting older and it is important that we preserve it."

Remembering where the Bar came from, Osman said, is the key to protecting its ideals and values as it faces the considerable challenges of the future.

On June 7, 1949, the Florida Supreme Court approved the petition of the voluntary Florida State Bar Association to set up The Florida Bar to which all lawyers would have to belong if they wished to practice in Florida. On March 4, 1950, the court approved rules for the Bar.

A few weeks later, The Florida Bar, which had been running simultaneously with the association, became its successor and the only statewide organization for all of Florida's attorneys. That first convention featured a debate on keeping the association intact for a year in case the Bar failed to work out (the motion failed) and an oblique reference to the attempt by African-American Virgil Hawkins to win admission to the University of Florida law school.

It was almost--but not quite--completely a white man's Bar, but some leaders who would help change that were members--such as future Bar and ABA President Chesterfield Smith and future Governor LeRoy Collins, who served on the Legislative Committee, as did then Attorney General Richard Ervin.

Smith did not become active in Bar activities until a couple of years later when his law partner, William A. McCrae--who wrote much of the Bar's original rules--successfully ran to be The Florida Bar's fourth president.

"I didn't have much thought about it," Smith said of the Bar's creation. "I thought, `Why not? That's the way it should have been.' I didn't see a lot of controversy about it."

In its first year, the Bar had dues of $5 and a total income of $38,385.04, including $16,174.87 left over from the association and $30 from the "sale of old typewriter," according to the two-page budget. Total expenses were $10,680.25.

"The Supreme Court reigned where it could, and the Pork Choppers [in the Florida Legislature] reigned over everything else," recalled Sherouse, writing in a 1977 issue of the Bar Journal commemorating The Florida Bar Journal's first 50 years.

He also noted that "the most surprising result of setting up the first accurate list of lawyers in this state was the discovery of a number of people, spread from Key West to Pensacola, practicing with some success without the benefit of clergy, law degree, or admission."

The early years were eventful.

"In five years, roughly, The Florida Bar appeared almost out of nowhere and made a deep mark nationally by putting together an honest and impartial bar examination, a workable grievance procedure, the roots of a system for enforcing legal and judicial ethics, devices for cheaply and politely upgrading the professional competence of practitioners, and the political muscle for the well-tiered if underpaid judicial system we enjoy today," Sherouse wrote.

It was also a different time, be noted. "They were, in fact, much better and much worse days than they now appear in memory. Back then, `black' was either a color or a mood; a `lady' was any white female over 21; no black and less than 10 ladies were in the Bar," Sherouse wrote of the time the Bar came into being.

(Actually, his numbers may have been off. The organizers of the first Florida Association of...